Andrew Sarris summarized the career of Malcolm St Clair (1897-1952) thus: his silent films fizzed and his sound films fizzled, it was as simple and tragic as that.
St Clair was an important writer-director of the silent era, primarily in the field of comedy. Starting out as an actor-writer-director with Mack Sennett, he went on to co-direct a couple of shorts with Buster Keaton, from whom he learned a great deal about comedy technique. St Clair also made a series of more sophisticated comedies at Paramount in the mid-twenties, including the original adaptation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928), co-written by Anita Loos herself.
As Sarris suggests, the quality of St Clair’s pictures declined with the advent of sound, though he continued to work until 1948. One of his early sound films was the MGM musical Montana Moon, which he produced and directed.
One of St Clair’s more interesting later assignments was directing the silent era comedy sequences for Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), including restaging some of his earlier work.
Paul Neal (1896-1969) began working in Douglas Shearer’s sound department at MGM in 1929, and went on to record and mix sound for a variety of studios. He worked with a range of important filmmakers, including John Ford (The Whole Town’s Talking, 1935), Frank Borzage (History is Made at Night, 1937), William Wyler (Wuthering Heights, 1939) and Henry Hathaway (The Dark Corner, 1946).
Neal recorded sound on five Metro musicals: Montana Moon, The Rogue Song, The Cuban Love Song, Dancing Lady and The Cat and the Fiddle.
British-born Phil Dunham (1885-1972) made his first screen appearance in 1914 and was in over 260 films. He had a parallel career as a screenwriter and worked on some of the ‘race’ pictures that featured all-Black casts. These included The Duke is Tops (1938), in which Lena Horne made her debut, and Gang Smashers (1938), which featured MGM alumna Nina Mae McKinney.
Dunham had uncredited roles in six Metro musicals, beginning with Montana Moon. The others were It Happened in Brooklyn, The Unfinished Dance, Annie Get Your Gun, Singin’ in the Rain and Easy to Love.
Gwendolyn Witter (1914-2018) played bits in three MGM musicals (Montana Moon, Children of Pleasure and Madam Satan) before moving on to more substantial roles at Paramount, often paired with Bing Crosby,
Carlisle retired in 1943 and lived for another 75 years.
Stella Dorothy Sebaston (1904-57) was a chorus girl who became a stage and then screen actor, securing a five-year contract at Metro. She appeared with Joan Crawford and Johnny Mack Brown in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), and supported them again in Montana Moon, playing Crawford’s sister.
Sebastian appeared in one other MGM musical, Free and Easy, with her friend Buster Keaton. Her contract ended and her career declined through minor studios, ending in playing bit parts.
John Brown (1904-74) was a college football star whose good looks secured him a screen test and a five-year contract with MGM. He played opposite Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), but his thick Alabama accent meant he was never going to be cast as a city sophisticate after the introduction of sound. Brown’s accent was suitable, however, for the cowboy he played when reteamed with Crawford in Montana Moon.
Brown’s career suffered a double blow in 1931 when he was replaced by the rising Clark Gable in Laughing Sinners, and then failed to secure the lead in Tarzan the Ape Man. His MGM contract ended and Brown spent the rest of his, very successful and prolific, career in Poverty Row westerns, frequently playing characters called ‘Johnny Mack Brown’.
Joan Prescott, the flirtatious daughter of wealthy John Prescott, arrives at the last minute to board her father’s private train. He warns her that he does not want any more foolishness from her. Joan’s sister, Elizabeth, tells her she is in love with Jeff, a man she met in Boston and who is on the train. Joan has often stolen men from Elizabeth, but she promises not to do so this time.
Joan does not like Jeff, but that evening he tells her that he is in love with her. On impulse, Joan gets off the train at the next stop. She buys a ticket back to New York but, while waiting for the train, comes across the campfire of Larry Kerrigan, a Texas cowboy. They talk, and Joan tells him how pleasant it is to be away from all the city noise. Larry says he often dreams of going to a city, to get away from the silence. Joan is surprised to find that Larry works on a ranch owned by her father. Larry says Mr Prescott is admired by all his men, but that he has “a pair of high-falutin’ daughters that ought to be hog-tied”. Larry nicknames Joan ‘Montana’ and she sleeps alongside him by the campfire. Over the next few days, they fall in love.
City girl Joan Prescott (Joan Crawford) and cowboy Larry Kerrigan (Johnny Mack Brown) bond round the old campfire
Elsewhere on the ranch, cowboy Froggy meets Bloom, a travelling doctor from the Bronx, who pulls Froggy’s bad tooth.
Joan and Larry arrive at the main camp [Montana Call] and he introduces her to Froggy, Bloom and the others as his wife. He does not tell them she is the boss’s daughter.
Joan and Larry say goodbye the next morning [Happy Cowboy] and ride to the ranch, where they tell her father and the others that they are married. Prescott takes Larry into the library. He tells Larry he is very pleased about the marriage, but cannot tell Joan because what he likes she is always against; but Joan overhears anyway.
Joan’s friends throw a party for her at the local roadhouse and Larry persuades her to go without him, because he does not have the proper clothes. Larry is unhappy that she does not get home until six in the morning. When Larry says he has to go to work, Joan says he does not have to because her dad will look after them. Larry tells her that is not the way things are going to be. Joan apologizes and he leaves for work.
Later, Joan and Larry go together to another party, at which both the city sophisticates and the ranch hands are present. Froggy and Bloom tease Larry about his fancy clothes. [Get Up You Cowboy; Trailin’ in Old Montana].
Larry dislikes Jeff and is unhappy when he sees Joan flirting with him. Larry tells Joan her city friends do not live up to his standards of decency. She says she will dance with whom she pleases. She then performs a tango with Jeff, who snatches a kiss at the end.
Joan tells Larry they made a mistake in marrying because neither belongs in the other’s world, and she refuses to leave with him. After a moment, Joan rushes after Larry and apologizes, but he refuses to come back with her.
Some time later, back with the other ranch hands [The Moon is Low; Sing a Song of Old Montana], Larry is missing Joan. Mr Prescott comes to tell Larry they are all returning to New York tomorrow. He asks Larry to talk to Joan, saying this is the first time he has ever seen her regret anything. Larry brightens when he hears that, but still refuses. [The Moon is Low].
Froggy (Cliff ‘Ukelele Ike’ Edwards) leads a cowboy sing-song
At the station, Joan is hoping Larry will at least come to say goodbye. At a water stop, the train is held up by masked Mexican bandits. One of them grabs Joan, who berates Jeff and the others for not helping her, and says Larry would have done something. The bandit carries off Joan and, laughing, she tells Larry to take off the mask because she would recognize his voice anywhere. Mr Prescott explains the trick to the other passengers, while Joan and Larry ride off happily with the other ‘bandits’ [Happy Cowboy].
Roseanne Bauchens (1882-1967) spent forty years as the editor-of-choice for Cecil B DeMille’s pictures, from Carmen (1915) to The Ten Commandments (1956). She even appeared alongside DeMille when he did his cameo in Sunset Boulevard (1950). So highly did DeMille value Bauchens that it was stipulated in his contracts that she was to be his editor. She won an Oscar for North West Mounted Police (1940).
This meant that Bauchens was the cutter on DeMille’s Metro musical, Madam Satan. Earlier that year, she edited Lord Byron of Broadway.
Henry Thomas Sharp (1892-1966) became a cinematographer in 1920, and went on to become a favourite of Douglas Fairbanks. Films shot by Sharp included Don Q Son of Zorro (1925), The Black Pirate (1926), The Iron Mask (1929) and Fairbanks’s curio, Around the World with Douglas Fairbanks (1931).
Sharp also photographed The Marriage Circle (1924) for Ernst Lubitsch and Vidor’s The Crowd (1928)
Henry Sharp’s two MGM musicals were Lord Byron of Broadway and \love in the Rough.
Canadian Raymond Blanning Egan (1890-1952) was a regular partner of composer Richard A Whiting, and together they wrote a number of standards, notably including the perennial ‘Ain’t We Got Fun’.
Egan and Whiting’s ‘The Japanese Sandman’ was performed by Cliff Edwards in Lord Byron of Broadway and, some years later, Lucille Norman sang the poignant ‘Till We Meet Again’ in For Me and My Gal.
